Partnership shows no sign of ending

NEW YORK -- Dressed in drag and standing in front of a meat locker, Johnny Depp smiles into the camera and cheerfully declares, "Tim's a swell guy."

NEW YORK -- Dressed in drag and standing in front of a meat locker, Johnny Depp smiles into the camera and cheerfully declares, "Tim's a swell guy."

In its genuine warmth and weirdness, the moment -- between scenes during the filming of 1994's Ed Wood -- illustrates the ongoing collaboration between Depp and director Tim Burton.

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street marks their sixth film together. It's an adaptation of Stephen Sondheim's gory musical about a barber who seeks revenge while cutting the throats of his customers.

"Singing. Who'd have ever thought?" Burton wondered during a recent interview, in which he and Depp both still found it hardly comprehensible that two guys who don't like musicals had made one.

"Certainly not me -- least of all me," Depp said.

While reminiscing about their new film and 17 years of working together, Depp and Burton often pick up each other's conversational trails, most of which end in either reveling in what they've managed to get away with in Hollywood or in some kind of self-deprecating joke.

Their paths first crossed in 1990's Edward Scissorhands, for which Burton cast Depp in his first leading role after his teen-idol success on the TV series 21 Jump Street.

The two recall their first meeting with clarity.

"I remember walking into that coffee shop like it was yesterday," Depp said. "I just knew instantly that he was the real thing. That was clear to me. There was an instant connection."

While many of the classic director-actor pairings (John Ford and John Wayne, Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune) have often focused on a particular genre, the Burton-Depp collaborations span a variety of films.